Broderick: Civil Disobedience in Defiance of Shutdown Possible!

While the federal courts and agencies
struggle with the federal government shutdown and impending debt ceiling
deadline, the nation’s law schools mostly remain relative oases of calm,
administrators said.

One notable exception operates in the
nation’s capital.

The District of Columbia David A. Clarke
School is the only public law school in Washington, where the federal government
controls local government spending. The university and the law school have
remained open because Mayor Vincent Gray tapped the city’s reserve fund. But
Clarke has been unable to procure goods or services since the shutdown began on
October 1 and faculty travel has been cancelled, according to dean Shelley
Broderick.

In fact, Broderick herself had to cancel
plans to attend a conference on deanship diversity at the University of
Washington in Seattle, where she was to participate in a panel discussion about
accessing public funds. The school very nearly had to cancel its signature
Joseph L. Rauh Lecture on October 2, which featured U.S. Senator Elizabeth
Warren.

The shutdown has been a major distraction
for students and faculty, who last week began discussing what to do should
Washington’s emergency funding dry up as expected.

"It’s very stressful, thinking about the
mechanisms we would have to employ to make sure the students get the education
they’ve paid for,” Broderick said.

"We don’t anticipate the shutdown going
on much longer. If we have to shut down, we’ll have to do something like we did
with the ‘Snowmageddon’ [the blizzard that hit Washington in 2010], where we
added 10 minutes onto each class until the end of the semester. If it goes
longer, our faculty is prepared to engage in civil disobedience to keep
teaching. We haven’t taken a vote on that yet, but we’ve discussed
it.”

One area that won’t shut down in any case
is the law school’s clinics. Clarke obtained an order from Washington Attorney
General Irvin Nathan establishing that the clinic staff is essential and cannot
be furloughed.

"We have lawyers and clients. We have
court cases and due dates,” Broderick said. "These are people in poverty, and we
have to keep the clinics open.”

Law schools otherwise have been largely
insulated from the shutdown, in part because they don’t rely on direct federal
support, apart from occasional grants for special projects, said Barry Currier,
managing director of accreditation and legal education at the American Bar
Association.

"We haven’t received any formal calls
from law deans about this,” Currier said. "I can’t think of any other ways
[beside externships] that the shutdown would affect legal education.”

The occasional grants that law schools
receive from the federal government generally are for long-term projects; the
money is not disbursed on a daily basis and thus these projects are not likely
to be disrupted, Currier said. Additionally, federal grants for special projects
typically are not central to a law school’s operational budget, he
added.

Outside Washington, the shutdown and
looming debt crisis have generated little of any chatter on law school
administration listservs, according Sarah Zearfoss, senior assistant dean for
admission, financial aid and career planning at the University of Michigan Law
School.

Importantly, the federal loan system has
not seen any disruptions, she said. While the U.S. Department of Education
oversees federal education borrowing, loan servicing is contracted out to
private companies such as Sallie Mae, whose employees remain on the
job.

"The shutdown is not affecting student
loan borrowers directly, mostly because student loans are a money-making venture
for the government,” said Heather Jarvis, a consultant with expertise in student
borrowing.

Moreover, federal student loan rates are
established every July 1 and locked in for 12 months; any market fluctuations
caused by the shutdown or debt ceiling jitters would have no immediate
effect.

It’s less clear what, if anything, would
happen to the federal loan system should the government fail to extend the debt
ceiling by the projected Thursday deadline, Jarvis said. Congress this year tied
the federal student loan rates to the 10-year Treasury note.

Still, student loan rates won’t be
calculated again until July 1, 2014, giving lawmakers and the markets plenty of
time to settle down, Jarvis said.

"I’m not even sure the [debt ceiling]
will make rates go up, rather that down,” she said. "I really don’t know if
there will be any direct consequences.”

Law school administrators are equally
confused.

"The debt ceiling stuff, though, is so
unprecedented that honestly, I just don’t think there’s anyone in higher
education speculating about it, at least at my level,” Zearfoss said.

Of course, law school endowments could
suffer if the debt ceiling wrecks havoc on the financial markets, Zearfoss
noted. But the same dynamic is at play every time the market is thrown into
flux, she said.